EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
I hadn’t really thought about being here forty- nine years when I made my decision to retire. Here are two other numbers. I’m now sixty- six and, as it happens, today is my forty-fourth wedding anniversary. I’ve also got two sons,
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two daughters, and nine grandchildren
Happy Hunt ... ing ground L Mick with Phil Tufnell and Michael Vaughan 42 PC October/November 2018
ooking down from one of the press rooms in the famous ‘lozenge’ media centre at Lord’s Nursery End has to be one of the best views in world cricket. You
see everything so clearly. Middlesex and Derbyshire are doing mid-table battle. The ground looks immaculate, as it always does, and the man responsible is taking a longer coffee break than usual to share a few thoughts about his life at Lord’s and beyond. Cricket, more than most sports, is about stats and records. Bearing in mind when he first did pitch work here, the Beatles were still a group and colour television had only just started to show that grass was green, I asked Mick Hunt why he was retiring after forty-nine years at Lord’s and not looking for another ‘single’.
“I’ve found an escape tunnel,” he said laughing. “I hadn’t really thought about being here forty-nine years when I made my decision to retire. Here are two other numbers. I’m now sixty-six and, as it happens, today is my forty-fourth wedding anniversary. I’ve also got two sons, two daughters, and nine grandchildren. Over the years, I’ve maybe put cricket first a bit too often. It’s time to change all that and spend more time with them. Payback time, I suppose.”
Mick actually says goodbye to Lord’s on 31st December. As we talk, there was still a busy autumn ahead with all the usual end of season renovation. For a few more weeks, Lord’s will remain a priority, but what’s in his mind for life after that?
“Getting my golf handicap down is a major objective for next year,” he said, again laughing. All he would admit to was that it was quite high at the moment. Very rarely, Mick had just returned from a break in Cyprus with his wife. They plan to do a whole lot more travelling together in his retirement. One way or another, he’ll be keeping away from cricket pitches, at least for a year. “After that, who knows?” he said, with the twinkle in his eye that all who know him will be well familiar with.
He admits that, somewhere along the line, he knows he will be tempted to sit on a mower or roller for a club somewhere now and again. Once a groundsman, always a groundsman, eh. “There’s a bit of catching up to do with the fun and relaxation side of life. I think I’ll be joining a gym, and definitely doing plenty of swimming,” he said.
Horseracing - National Hunt, of course - and sailing are on Mick’s agenda as well. He expects to be popping into Lord’s to watch a
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